This weekend, I decided to watch the 1st episode of the Fosse/Verdon miniseries on Hulu to see if it was any good. I ended up bingeing the entire 8 episodes…

I can see why it was nominated for so many awards.  Everyone in it does wonderful work.  Sam Rockwell does a great job of portraying the charm, talent, and cruelty of Bob Fosse.  Michelle Williams really gives a tour de force performance as Gwen Verdon, his long-suffering partner and wife, bouncing between her signature cheerful bubbliness, down to the depths of despair.  I was surprised to find out she did her own singing.  She’s good.  (The Golden Globe as well as the Emmy she won for the part were well deserved.)

The rest of the cast supports them well as the various people who came and went in their lives.  (I didn’t even recognize Paul Reiser at first in his guise as Cy Feuer, producer of Cabaret.)  Norbert Leo Butz embodies Paddy Chayefsky’s gruff, troubled, highly intelligent, very prickly personality.

Their real-life daughter, Nicole Fosse, was involved in the production, but the source material was the book Fosse by Sam Wasson.  I won’t give away any plot points/circumstances, but after you watch it, definitely do a little more research.  As with all dramatic fiction, it took a few liberties with the details.

If you enjoy musical theatre/film and the history of it and want to know more about the people who created some of Broadway’s biggest hits, then you should definitely watch this one.  (Small caveat:  Fosse could have been the poster boy for “casting couch director” and cheating – if you get triggered by such issues, then you should skip it.)

Now I need to get back to finishing all the stuff I was going to do before I got sucked into watching it…